Sorry, very short post (had ill kids today)
Sarah’s picks are the Infinite Monkey Cage (this was really good on risk last week) and the Refugees of the Rainforest contrasting Gerald Durrell’s naturalist work in Jersey with the orangutan’s natural habitat on Sumatra (Sarah cites Durrell’s books as a catalyst to studying biology)

My picks are In Our Time on the development of the microscope and the second episode of Light and Dark with Jim Al-Khalili.

This Monday sees Jim Al-Khalili explain how we’ve been able to discover so much about the universe through the manipulation of light in Light and Dark, and The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox and Robin Ince is back on the radio. Also we have a new episode of Horizon on Friday looking at Comet ISON which is currently making a show in the night sky.

Both Sarah and I are hoping that there will be more Chemistry programmes on our airwaves soon. I’ve been told that Professor Andrea Sella is “cooking up some Chem” for the Frontiers radio series soon. He’s also been on Business Daily for their Elements series (mp3 podcasts downloads here: A matter of life and phosphorous and Elemental business: Helium).

There are some video suggestions on the end of the guide this week, including a discourse by Professor Stephen Curry at the Royal Institution about the development of X-Ray crystallography.

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Wow, we’re in February already and about 10% of the year gone. There’s more great science in the TV and radio guide this week (collated by @MrsDrSarah). Sarah’s pick of the week is Science Cafe on Radio 4 (Tues, 6:30pm) for GCSE and A level chemists – considering how our growing reliance on modern technology is creating a shortage of critical elements. My pick of the week is Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom on CBBC (Wed 6:15pm). This week’s episode is about one of the fathers of Physics: Sir Isaac Newton. I am really enjoying this show and pleased that CBBC have made the decision to put such informative TV onto the schedule. They’re doing a great job of combining the history of scientific discovery with the fun and wonder of science; perfect for early KS3.

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Paradox: The Nine Greatest Engimas in Science by Jim Al-Khalili is a collection of his favourite puzzles and conundrums in sciencefrom Einstein’s theories about space and time, to the latest ideas of how the quantum world works. Some of the “perceived paradoxes” may be familiar, such as Schrödinger’s famous cat, which is seemingly alive and dead at the same time; or the Grandfather Paradox – if you travelled back in time and killed your grandfather you would not have been born and would not therefore have killed your grandfather. Other paradoxes will be new to you, but no less bizarre and fascinating.

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For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. In Pathfinders, Jim Al-Khalili celebrates the forgotten, inspiring pioneers who helped shape our understanding of the world during the golden age of Arabic science, including Iraqi physicist Ibn al-Haytham, who practised the modern scientific method over half a century before Bacon; al-Khwarizmi, the greatest mathematician of the medieval world; and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a Persian polymath to rival Leonardo da Vinci.